Abstract

The speech stimuli for this experiment were derived from two sentences, each containing the words free criminals. In one sentence, the words free criminals occurred intraphrase and in the other sentence they occurred interphrase. The vowel duration in free and the silent interval preceding criminals were systematically and independently varied. Vowel durations of 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 msec were paired with silent intervals of 0, 50, 100, 150, 250, and 500 msec. Subjects were asked to make direct magnitude estimates of the silent interval duration between free and criminals. Power‐law scaling exponents for judgments versus vowel duration and silent interval duration were 0.29 and 0.48, respectively. The above experimental procedure was repeated in two experiments using nonspeech stimuli with temporal characteristics similar to the two sentences. In particular, the silent interval to be estimated occurred between two 1000‐Hz tones. In Experiment 1 the duration of the tone preceding the silent interval was varied, while in Experiment 2 the tone following the silent interval was varied. Power‐law scaling exponents for judgments versus tone duration and silent interval duration were 0.45 and 0.36, respectively, for Experiment 1 and 0.24 and 0.45, respectively, for Experiment 2.